Walk by the Spirit

Tom Shrader opens with a powerful video testimony of a family who responded to violent tragedy with forgiveness and grace, using it as a living illustration of the Holy Spirit's work in a believer's life. He then walks through Galatians 5:16-26, explaining the ongoing battle between flesh and Spirit, examining the deeds of the flesh and the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Shrader emphasizes that the fruit of the Spirit is not a standard reserved for spiritual giants but the normal, expected outcome of a right relationship with God through Christ, made possible by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

“The fruit of the Spirit is not something Paul says if you've really arrived and you're really exceptional — those are the inevitable byproducts of a right relationship with God through Christ, and there's no exception to this.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Galatians: Fighting for Grace

Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 49 min

Themes: holy spirit, forgiveness, fruit of the spirit, flesh vs spirit, grace, tragedy, peace, spiritual growth, grieving a loss, struggling with anger, parent, new believer, walking through trauma, struggling with self-control, seeking peace, young adult

Scripture: Galatians 5:13, Galatians 5:16-26, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 3:16, James 3:13-18, 1 John 5:21, 1 Corinthians 13:7, 1 Corinthians 15:56, Ephesians 6:10-13, Philippians 3:9, Matthew 5

Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, pneumatology, indwelling spirit, sin nature, fruit of the spirit, galatians 5, works of the flesh

Full Transcript

A Wedding and a Storm

We were in Lynchburg, Virginia, at the end of August, preparing for our daughter Leslie's wedding to Joe Gahagan, a First Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. There was a hurricane coming up the coast of Florida and North Carolina called Hurricane Earl. We didn't have flowers. We didn't have thirteen neckties for the groomsmen, the groom, and the dads. Joe was potentially going to get mobilized to help hurricane victims up and down the coast, and potentially Neil and Katie were going to be stuck in Boston because of canceled flights. We were wondering if God was going to bring these pieces together so this wedding could come off.

As the days went by, things just started falling into place. Joe didn't get mobilized. He got off a day early and came to Lynchburg. They were able to get their marriage license, and things just kept coming together. The church was a hundred-year-old granite building with beautiful wood, a big silver pipe organ — just beautiful.

Leslie was beautiful. The bridal party was beautiful. Everything was great. Neil did a great job in the service. The reception hall was beautifully decorated, beautifully lit, with a big long staircase that Joe brought Leslie down into the crowd. There was great food, lots of fun, great music, lots of dancing, and lots of laughing.

The Storm That Followed

Then we got a call from a battalion chief of the Lynchburg Fire Department — horrible news. Two off-duty police officers we had hired at the reception got word that somebody had been mugged. We didn't even think it would be my dad. Then we got the news that it was him. We rushed to the hospital, walked into the emergency room, and understood right away that he had been beaten. Three boys attacked him, beat him up, knocked him to the ground, kicked him in the head, and kicked him in the ribs.

There were witnesses who called 911. The call came in: "That elderly man I was just talking to — he was beaten, kicked in the head, and they left him on the ground here. We just found him." His pupils were dilated, blank stare, no response to voice or touch. We got horrible news from a neurosurgeon there about the injury to his brain. He was basically brain dead. We were told it could be a couple of hours, a couple of days, or a couple of weeks — he could have stayed in that state for any of that time.

My son Zach and I stayed in the room with my dad as the first shift. They had cleaned him up. He was sitting up in bed, still with those pupils dilated and fixed, no response — just breathing. But in the midst of that shock and trauma, being there with my son, who was curled up on a little couch looking the way he looked when he was eight or ten years old, as cute as could be — just the peace that came over that room, the peace and quiet, was something I'll never forget.

Upon hearing that we were going to take my dad off life support, Leslie got physically sick, and Joe had to hold her hair back while she threw up. After she was done, Leslie said to her husband of all of six hours, "I don't hate who did this to Grandpa. They need grace just like I do."

Redemption Over Retribution

The day my dad died, the media requests were already piling on top of each other. The first interview I did was a phone interview with the local ABC News affiliate. The reporter asked me, "What does justice look like to you in this case?" I couldn't answer him right away. I didn't know. After I thought about what Leslie had said, I called the reporter back and told him, "I don't want retribution. I want redemption. I want God to reach out and touch these boys. For us, it's a reflection of what God is doing in our lives and what God is doing in this situation to minister to other people."

At the beginning of that week, there was Hurricane Earl. We didn't know about this other storm that was brewing and that would hit us — the storm our family has been through. God can call off the storm and build your faith. He can walk through the midst of the storm and refine your faith. But for my dad, He took him home and perfected his faith. And that provides a lot of peace and a lot of comfort.

God's Presence in Every Storm

Maybe you look at something like that and say, "I've never had anything exactly like that in my life." The point is simply this: God is present in those storms of life, whether it is a light rain or whether it is a powerful storm coming into your life. It is the presence of God in the midst of that.

It occurs to me that maybe you are here and you would say, "I don't know Christ." You look at a moment like that and think, "I'm not sure I even have a box for that. I'm not sure I could respond like that. I'm not sure I could talk about redemption rather than retribution or punishment." That is because that response is a supernatural response — a response that God, the Holy Spirit, brings into a person's heart.

When we face the "what about" or "why" questions, we almost always end up arriving at our good and His glory. You can see the good things that come out of that — the deepness of love and faith and faithfulness, and all the doors that have been opened since then. Those of you who have kids or grandkids know what those weddings are like. These are joyous moments — dancing, fun, laughter — and then this just drops right in.

Walk by the Spirit

The source of encouragement is that God is so much alive in the lives of His people. The spirit of God that works in a person is the same Spirit that is available to you. Even if you would look at something and think you could not do it, the Spirit of God in you could. In a way, that is an ideal introduction to the very passage we have before us today.

I invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Galatians, chapter 5. Today we are going to look at verses 16 through 26. Next week we will look at verses 1 through 10 of chapter 6, and then in the final week of our study of the book of Galatians, we will look at verses 11 through 18.

The Spirit Repeated Throughout the Passage

As we look at this passage, I have a habit of marking repeated words or phrases so that my eye is drawn to them. If you look at verses 16, 17, 18, 22, and 25, you will see the reference to the Spirit of God. Clearly, a key part of this passage is the Holy Spirit.

Paul is going to make the point that God has delivered us out of bondage to sin, but the battle continues. We were children of wrath; we are now children of God. There are times when we sin, when we relapse. As we looked at last week in chapter 5, verse 13, there are those who take the freedom we find in Christ and turn it into a license or an excuse.

The Command to Walk by the Spirit

Let us look at verses 16 and 17: *"But I say to you, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please."*

You get the picture of opposition, of warfare. There is a cataclysmic battle between good and evil, between God and Satan. In our lives, there is a battle against Satan and his demons, against the world system, and against our own flesh.

What Paul gives us in verse 16 of Galatians 5 is a command. It is in the imperative mood. He is not saying think about this; he is saying do this. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

Verse 18 continues: *"But if you are led by the Spirit."* The idea of walking here is an idea of lifestyle. Paul is saying: as you live life, live it in light of the Holy Spirit of God who indwells you. That is where the battle lies — between the Spirit and the flesh.

The Holy Spirit as Our Indwelling Helper

We understand, and this is what we have been looking at for nine weeks now, that our sin has separated us from God, and it is through a right relationship with Jesus Christ that we come into a right relationship with the Father. Then, in a moment of dire need — though at the time the disciples did not even fully know it — the night before Jesus died, He had them together and said, "Let not your heart be troubled." He told them He was going to leave, and He understood that concerned them, but that the Father would send another. That word literally means one of the same substance — another of the same kind. It is the third Person; it is God the Spirit. Jesus said He would not leave them as orphans. The Spirit would indwell them, convict them, give them strength, and bring into their lives a peace that passes all understanding. But the battle still continues. The battle still rages between the flesh and the Spirit.

Understanding the Flesh

When the Bible speaks of the flesh, it does so primarily in one of three ways. It can refer to skin, muscle, or the physical body. It can refer to those who are unsaved — those who are, as Scripture says, in the flesh. The third use, and the one employed here, is the idea that the flesh refers to a moral or spiritual weakness, a helplessness of human nature that still clings to us even after we are redeemed. One author writes that the flesh for Christians is the propensity to sin, their fallen humanness that awaits redemption — which will be new and holy — and he is speaking there not just of the end of this life but ultimately of glorification.

Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification

There are three words we use regularly: justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification is that moment in time where God declares us — who were sinners — righteous, and it is based on the finished work of Christ. It is totally a work of God, beginning to end. God is the one who redeems us. Christ is the one who dies for our sin. It would be impossible for us to experience justification or redemption without Christ.

What Paul is telling us here is that it is equally impossible to experience sanctification without the Holy Spirit. Sanctification is the process of becoming Christ-like — of starting to look more and more like Him.

The Family Resemblance

I went for a walk the other night with Sandy, and as we were walking and talking, a person came toward us with a dog. You know the old adage that people start to look like their dogs. This was a rather large, rather sloppy, somewhat drooly dog — and the owner looked remarkably like the dog.

Here is another way to think about it. When my kids were little, if I brought ten children up here and you did not know who they were, and I asked which ones were Susan's and mine, you would point to two of them immediately. How would you know? The little round face, the pasty skin, the little eyes — they look just like us. That is what sanctification is.

The Fruit of a Right Relationship with God

People are supposed to look at you and glorify your Father in heaven. That is not a matter of resolution of your will. Paul is going to identify the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and fruit is the result — it is a byproduct of a healthy vine. The byproduct of a right relationship with God through Christ is that you start to look like your Father, that your light shines in such a way that people see your good works. Jesus says in Matthew 5 that people will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

We cannot get away from this. There is to be something distinctive and different about us — unique, contagious. People might not be able to explain what it is, but they at least recognize it. And it begins with a whole way that we see ourselves and the world around us.

Two Kinds of Wisdom: Earthly and Heavenly

Keep your finger in Galatians chapter 5 and turn right to the book of James — page 655 in the Bible we gave you. James is talking about wisdom, and when thinking about the flesh and the Spirit and the opposition between them, the question of worldview comes to mind: how we see God, how we see ourselves, how we see the interactions of things around us. That leads to James chapter 3, verse 13.

James asks a question: "Who is wise and understanding? Let him show it by his good behavior and his deeds." He then goes on to contrast earthly, natural, demonic thinking with heavenly, supernatural, godly thinking. What you will notice, between this passage and the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, is that there are great similarities.

He says, "If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth." This thought process — bitter, jealous, selfishly ambitious — that wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. And here is how you know: where there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil thing.

So if you were to step back and look at your life, here is what James is saying. If you see disorder and selfishness — if you are at odds with your spouse, at odds with your parents, at odds with your kids, if there is constant tension in your life — you should stop and look at yourself and ask, what is my contribution to this? Because you are thinking in a style that is earthly, natural, and demonic.

But the wisdom from above — thinking as God thinks — is pure and peaceable and gentle and reasonable, and it is full of mercy and good fruit and unwavering and without hypocrisy. Therein lies the whole tension, that idea of the fruit. So go back to the book of Galatians, and we will work through this section.

Walk by the Spirit: A Way of Life

The key part of this passage is the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22. Beginning in verse 16, Paul says to walk by the Spirit. That phrase is in the present tense — it is a continuous, regular action. It is a way of life; this is the way you are to live. Galatians 3:16 tells us the word of Christ richly dwells within you. Philippians 3:9 expresses the desire to know Him and the power of His resurrection. To walk in — or live by — the Spirit is a lifestyle, and if we do that, we will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

Verse 17 tells us that the flesh and the Spirit are in opposition to one another. First Corinthians 15, verse 56 declares, "The power of sin is in the law, but thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul wants us to be led by the Spirit, because there is a battle going on.

The Battle Never Stops

Turning to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 10, Paul tells us to take a strong stance in the Lord and to put on the full armor of God. Verse 12 says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, and against the powers, and against the forces of this darkness and spiritual forces and wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore, put on the full armor of God."

Lost in the English is something clear in the Greek. In the Greek, the tense would read this way: put on once and for all, and leave on once and for all, the full armor of God. We might ask, when do I put on armor? We put on armor when going into battle. But the Greek tells us to put it on once and for all and leave it on once and for all, because our battle is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There is never a time when this war ceases to exist.

There is a friend — a little older — for whom pornography has always been a struggle. One Christmas, he had given his grandkids presents that needed batteries, so he went Christmas morning to a Circle K to pick some up. The store was busy, and the employee told him the batteries were in the back and to go grab what he needed and get in line. So there he was, on this mission of mercy to get batteries for his grandkids' toys on Christmas morning, and the batteries were right next to the magazines that were his constant downfall. He said, "Here I am on Christmas morning at about 8:15 in the Circle K, and I am right in the middle of a spiritual battle."

That battle never stops. You can be sitting in church and, maybe it is not something like that, but perhaps it is simply the way you are thinking about the people around you, or thinking about tomorrow. Whatever it is, that battle never ends. It is a battle between the flesh and the Spirit.

The Deeds of the Flesh and the Fruit of the Spirit

What Paul wants us to have is some understanding of how we would know how well we are doing in this battle. So in verses 19, 20, and 21, he gives us what he calls the deeds of the flesh — some translations will say the works of the flesh. And then in verse 22, he gives us the fruit of the Spirit.

The Deeds of the Flesh

Both the list of the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit are partial lists. Paul has not included every sin, nor has he included every fruit of the Spirit — he doesn't mention holiness, for instance, among others. These are indicators. So what we want to do, which should be particularly unusual and helpful, is give you an opportunity not to judge the people around you, but to look at your own life — and not to judge it by activities.

Isn't that Jesus' comment to the disciples? "Here's how the world is going to know you are My disciples: that you love one another." Very humanly, if we were to come and say, "Here is what God produces in our life," we would start to list activities — going to church, Bible study, and so on. But He doesn't do that. He says it is attitudinal. So let's take a look at it.

Paul says the deeds of the flesh are evident, and he lists fifteen of them, placing them in three groups. The first group is sexual sin. The second is man-made religious sin. The third is interpersonal. He talks about immorality and impurity and sensuality — being driven in a way that is strongly sexual, uninhibited, unabashedly wrong, and without any concern for who knows. In my experience — and I could absolutely be wrong — most people, when they go right to that list, make sexual sin the big one. I don't need to spend any time on it because you already understand it.

Idolatry and the Idol Factory of the Heart

The second group is man-made religion, and what Paul identifies there is idolatry and sorcery. Idolatry is the obvious sin of worshiping any man-made image. Sorcery — that Greek word from which we get the English word "pharmacy" or "pharmaceutical" — has its origin in medicine in general, but it came to be used primarily of mood-altering drugs similar to those that create havoc in our own day.

Paul says we tend to be idol worshipers. It was Calvin who said our heart is an idol factory, meaning we are continually creating idols. Now, I want to make a pitch for your study guide. If you bought a study guide and have not yet looked at this lesson, you should. If you didn't buy one, you can go online and download it. The deeper reflection section is really helpful.

There is an article that has become, for many of us, something we read over and over again. It is by Tim Keller, and it is called "Idols of the Heart." I remember the first time I encountered this idea while studying 1 John. The letter ends in what seems like an odd way. 1 John 5:21 simply says, "Little children, guard yourself from idols." The classic definition of an idol is anything in our lives that occupies the place that should be occupied by God alone.

In this article, Keller talks about identifying idols, and he even gives us a test. He identifies somewhere around twenty idols or idolatries — I am sure there could be more. There is the power idol, the approval idol, the control idol, the helping idol: "My life only has meaning or worth if people are dependent upon me and need me." Some of you are very needy in that you need to be needed. There are also dependency idols, work idols, achievement idols, irreligious idols, racist idols, and family idols.

Here is a simple way to identify your own. Take whatever it is and complete the sentence: "My life is only worth living if I have ___." Or say it negatively: "My life would not be worth living if I didn't have ___." If the answer is anything other than Jesus, it is an idol. And these can be very good things. I believe I have friends whose children are their idols — those kids become everything. We know the work idol well, but it is much more subtle than that.

Idols Close to Home

I appreciate the approval idol and the power idol as examples, but for me personally, it is comfort. I simply cannot stand anything that upsets my comfort. I love my house. My favorite part is my bed — I have the greatest bed. Someone asked me about it recently. It is a waterbed, and I am probably the only person you know still sleeping on one. I have had this bed for forty years. The thread count on my sheets has to be about five thousand. You settle in, it wraps all around you, it is just perfect — and then, faintly but clearly, I hear it: "Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff." A dog barking across the lake. And I think, why do I have this dog? Just so you know, I should not be aware that you have a dog unless I see you walking it. But why do I care? Because it interrupts me.

Comfort is my idol. I will get a call — "Can I meet with you?" — and my first thought is, "But I am so comfortable right now." It can be any of those things. Look at your work. If your work is where you find your value, that is an idol. We find our value in Christ. It is not to say the other things are not important, but they must not occupy the place that belongs to God alone.

What I love about Keller's article is that he does not leave you in the diagnosis. He talks about healing those idols with the gospel. Here is what he says: "Your problem is that you are looking for something besides Christ for your happiness."

Sins That Turn Toward Others

After those first two groups, Paul moves to the third, which turns toward others. He begins with enmity — and it is actually in the plural — referring to hateful attitudes.

The Works of the Flesh

The result of living according to the sinful nature is visible in the list Paul gives us, beginning around verse 20. There is a progression in all of this. As one author writes, the sinful nature produces a seemingly endless variety of sins. Some people want to get ahead at others' expense, so they are guilty of rivalries and dissensions. Others are unhappy when others succeed, and the proper term for such a grudging spirit is envy.

Socrates wrote that the envious are pained by their friend's success. It is that kind of darkness, and it shows up in all sorts of ways. Think about the holiday gathering where you go to your brother or sister's house and they have a wonderful home while you feel you live in a dump. The list goes on: outbursts of anger, dispute, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. Paul says there are all sorts of things like this, and he does not need to spend a great deal of time defining each one, because one author suggests this was a list common to those in Galatia both inside and outside the church, just as it is common to us today.

Here is the point. If those characteristics describe your life — and the tense carries the idea of an ongoing, practicing pattern — then you need to understand that you are being driven by the flesh, not by the Spirit. If your life is in turmoil, it could be the circumstances around you, or it could be you. When someone is in broken relationship after broken relationship after broken relationship, something is probably wrong with that person.

The same principle applies to churches. We see people going from church to church to church. We had someone from another church in the East Valley come here, and they remarked they had seen nothing but people from their own church when they visited Gilbert. I told them that when I visited their church, all I saw was everyone I knew who had their Bibles marked up with notes from studies here. When that pattern of constant movement repeats itself, either something is wrong with the person, or at the very least they lack the discernment to recognize a good church. Problems, problems, problems.

The Fruit of the Spirit

More important now is verse 22 and the fruit of the Spirit. Notice the contrast with what came before: the deeds of the flesh are plural, but the fruit of the Spirit is singular. There are nine characteristics listed here, and they come as a whole. It is not a smorgasbord where you select love, peace, goodness, and one more of your choosing. Think of it like a bunch of grapes — there may be nine individual grapes, but they come as one bunch.

More than one author has suggested that the fruit of the Spirit is love, and the remaining eight characteristics simply flesh out what love is — they are what love looks like when you examine it carefully. Either way, Paul is describing characteristics that should be present in the life of the believer. The idea of fruit appears 106 times in the Old Testament and 70 times in the New Testament, so it is a significant and recurring image.

Love

The fruit of the Spirit begins with love, and we know this is agape love — a form of love that secular authors rarely wrote about but that Christian writers return to again and again. John MacArthur writes that this form of love is the most reflective of personal choice, not a simple pleasant emotion or feeling, and that agape love is a mark of salvation.

There is something important to add to that, however. Love is indeed a choice, but there is a danger in emphasizing choice so heavily that we deny the feeling attached to it. Agape love does have a feeling attached to it. If you can honestly contemplate the reality of Good Friday and Easter — that you were lost and separated from God, and that while you were still lost, Christ came and lived and died for you — and that does not move you emotionally, something is wrong. Not every Sunday, not every moment, but at some point that truth should move you.

At times we find ourselves in very difficult situations. In a community like this church, there are people in our lives whom we are called to love and may not even particularly like. Yet we remain in relationship with them, and it is a loving relationship. Jonathan Edwards — and if you are unfamiliar with him, go home and search his images online, because this is not a man who looks like he would be fun at a ballgame; he is a very stern individual — was actually critical of the revival he witnessed in his time, saying it was too emotional. Yet he wrote a classic work called Religious Affections in which he argued that there are appropriate affections we should feel, and that in the matter of love we should be drawn into emotion, sometimes overwhelmed by it.

Joy

Love is followed by joy. That word appears 70 times in the New Testament, and it signifies a feeling of happiness based on a spiritual reality rather than on circumstances. It is not circumstantial happiness. If your joy rises and falls with the stock market — Wells Fargo sitting at $24 a couple of weeks ago and climbing to nearly $34 now — then your happiness moves like a chart, spiking and dropping with every change in conditions. That is not the joy Paul is describing here.

Peace That Transcends Circumstance

Happiness is circumstantial. Joy, like peace, transcends that. Paul can write the book of Philippians — all about joy — from prison, because his joy is derived not from his circumstance but from his relationship with God through Christ. Peace is the same way.

Love, joy, peace. Peace is not the absence of turmoil. It is the tranquil presence of God in the mind. "Let not your heart be troubled." Jesus says this the night before He goes to the cross, when these eleven disciples are going to face arguably one of the most difficult days of their lives. They have invested three years in Christ, He is going to be killed the next day, and they are going to wonder what in the world happened.

Peace, again, is the presence of God in the midst of even the most difficult circumstances. We all have scenarios, and whatever you lay out, you can find something worse. When Susan and I would go to her oncologist, we always came the same way down the hall — to the right was her oncologist, and to the left was pediatric oncology. That was even tougher. You can always find something tougher.

But in Greg's story, that was pretty tough. He described Leslie coming back and talking about how even in the midst of all of it, there was a peace. That is the promise God gives to His children: "My peace I leave you, My peace I give you. Not as the world gives." It is not the peace the world manufactures or rents. It is the peace that comes from understanding God and who He is — an understanding that even in the midst of the worst storm He allows into your life, there is this sense that it will be okay.

I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was laying out a set of circumstances I thought were dire. This person said to me, "It'll be okay. God is the one who will provide the strength."

Patience in Big Things and Small

Love, joy, peace — and then patience. Patience carries with it the idea of tolerance, long-suffering, and enduring injury. Of the eleven disciples, ten suffered agonizing deaths. That is patience in the big things.

Patience also shows up in the small things — like a particular light at McQueen and Elliott that is my nemesis. Susan was in the hospital nine times, and all nine times checking out was a nightmare. Once they told us we would leave at 7:30, and we did not get out until 4:30. On another occasion, a doctor who had been extraordinary with us — who spent an enormous amount of time with us and was very kind — told me he would move things along. I decided I could help, so I removed my monitor equipment and set it on the bed. When the monitor nurse came in and asked what happened, I told her a nurse had said I was going home and did not need it anymore, which was not entirely true. I then told the next nurse who came in the same thing. I lied, really, as I look back at it. But we got out of there in about two hours.

Here is the thing about patience, and about love, joy, and all of them: you never know if you are a loving person until you are placed alongside people who are unlovable. It is easy to be loving when everything is going your way. It is easy to be patient when every light is green.

Kindness, Goodness, and Faithfulness

Kindness is simply a tender concern for one another — and I add, at home. I watch people at lunch: they are courteous, they politely ask someone to pass the butter. Then at home, they knock people down to grab it. Being filled with the Spirit is not a license to be a jerk at home.

It is about small things. I was walking into a building the other day, loaded down with things for a Bible study, and a man also headed to that Bible study looked at me and did not hold the door. We are not talking about putting a man on the moon. We are talking about simply being nice. Goodness is that kindness put into action.

Then there is faithfulness — being loyal and trustworthy. And gentleness, which can also be translated as meekness. The definition we use for meekness is strength under control.

The Ultimate Example: Jesus on the Cross

All of these qualities find their ultimate example in Jesus. I was just rereading the passages the other day. Jesus is on the cross — He has been beaten, crowned with thorns, and nailed there. And now, on top of all of that, He has

Meekness and Self-Control

Meekness, or gentleness, means that even when you have your rights, your control, or authority over someone, you choose not to use it in a way that is wrong. Self-control is simply the restraint that flows from that disposition. You can look at the fruit of the Spirit and see how one leads to the next leads to the next.

Consider what was happening at the cross. People were walking by saying, "King of kings? He saved others, he couldn't save himself. If you're really the Messiah, why don't you come down here?" Tom has said many times that would have been his breaking point — to come down, end it, and refuse to die for anyone behaving that way. But Jesus could have done exactly that, and He didn't. That is meekness in its fullest expression.

Crucifying the Flesh

Paul writes in verse 24 that if you belong to Christ, you have crucified the flesh. This connects back to the classic passage in chapter two, verse 20: "I have been crucified with Christ." What Paul is describing here is a process — mortification is the theological word — the ongoing execution of the flesh, and he uses the imagery of crucifixion deliberately.

Several authors point out that crucifixion involves shame, it is painful, and crucially, it is a gradual process that nevertheless inevitably kills. Crucifixion was not instantaneous. Jesus was on the cross for three hours, but in some cases crucifixion could go on for days, depending on the intention of the executioner. In the same way, the battle against the flesh is slow and gradual, but the outcome is inevitable — the flesh will die. For believers, that process reaches its completion at glorification, when we are placed in full and final right relationship with God forever.

Keeping Step with the Spirit

Therefore, verse 25 follows: "If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit." Some translations render this as "let us keep step with the Spirit." The Greek term behind it comes from the military and speaks of getting into rank and file and remaining disciplined there.

J.I. Packer writes that holiness by habit-forming is not self-sanctification or self-effort, but simply a matter of understanding the Spirit's method of keeping us in step with Him. What this means is that we need to be actively engaged in the discipline of spiritual growth. This is not optional, and it is not for the exceptional few.

Paul is not saying that if you have really arrived spiritually, you might begin to see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He is saying these are the inevitable byproducts of a right relationship with God through Christ. There is no exception to this, which is precisely why they appear in the form of a command and why they are to be taking place continually.

Not Comparing, Not Competing

Verse 26 is easy to miss — in Tom's Bible it sits at the top of a column just before chapter six begins — but Paul writes: "Let us not become boastful, challenging one another and envying one another." This verse is set in the context of right relationships with one another. One paraphrase puts it this way: we are not to compare ourselves with each other as if one of us is better or worse, because we have far more interesting things to do with our lives, and each one of us is an original.

Paul seems to be showing how the fruit of the Spirit gets fleshed out in community, specifically in the life of the church. As believers begin to live out love toward one another, this is where these qualities become visible and concrete.

How the Church Eats Its Own

Tom closed the previous week by saying he would spend more time exploring love, pointing to 1 Corinthians 13:7: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." The question he left was simply this: imagine a church like that.

In reviewing an upcoming book, the very first section — titled "Indefensible Things We Do to One Another" — tells the story of a family with a severely needy child who is eventually told by a church that their child is no longer welcome. The author uses that story to examine how the church can eat and devour one another.

Looking back over twenty-one years, the most painful experiences by far have been people devouring one another — making accusations, saying things that have no basis in fact, and then watching others pick those things up, assume they are true, and pass them along. Before long, ten or twelve people are upset about something that had nothing to do with them, fighting someone else's cause on behalf of someone they do not even know. It is staggering, and it is deeply destructive.

This fruit of the Spirit — this love, patience, kindness, and gentleness — is meant to describe how the family of God actually lives together. Not a household where every person is behind a closed door, isolated and combative, but a family shaped by the Spirit into something altogether different.

Walking in the Spirit

These are going to be the characteristics of our life. Now, inevitably, in the midst of that, there will still be sin. How do we deal with sin? That is what we pick up next week in chapter six, verse one.

I give you those things not as an objective study, but so you can objectively study them and now subjectively apply them to your life. Which of those two lists represents you most often? Because if it was that list of the flesh, you have a lot of things to be concerned about. And what do you do? You repent, you rejoice. You come to Him.

Father, thank You for this awesome and amazing truth. You are a God who loves us and cares for us. You are a God who saved us and sustains us. Father, we pray that we would be men, women, children, and students who would love You and care for You. God, we pray that Your Spirit would invade our hearts and bring us to a point of redemption. We pray it in Christ's name, amen.